Christmas Week in Commuter School

My husband is in commuter school this week. He got his coin belt and two books of tickets and his ticket punch. Very cool. He's learning how to deal with unruly passengers, and how to calculate the fares. It's more complicated than it looks, he says, because of all of the discounts, zones, lay overs, and various passes. It's not rocket science, but it's a lot to memorize.

At first we had thought he would work his first passenger train on Christmas Day. How poetic! I was planning on buying tickets and taking the kids on the train to see their Dad at work. (Although I was a little nervous about that. I didn't want him to feel embarrassed and I didn't want to draw too much attention to him, or get him in trouble. He didn't seem to mind the plan, though.) The way things have worked out, however, he is in the classroom all week and will do a week of passenger train service next week. They have Christmas off so he'll be in school over the weekend.

We still want to buy tickets and ride his train. I think I'll try to do it on his last day of training-- although I have no idea how we would know WHICH train he would be on-- or which car, for that matter.

Now that my husband has got the uniform our son is starting to get really excited. He read The Polar Express several times last week. It seems that now he finally has a firm idea of what his Dad is going to be doing. Let's face it, freight service is just not as cool for kids as passenger service. My husband doesn't really care WHAT he will be doing. With the recession getting worse, he just wants to be working.